Awesome gardening

It is gorgeous outside today! Any my tulips are budding! And, unless I'm very much mistaken, my teeny-tiny lilac shoot is going to bloom this year! The lilac was a shoot that we transplanted from my parents' old house (the house I grew up in) the year we bought the house, and mostly it just looks like an enthusiastic stick, but it looks like we'll finally see some flowers this year.

The climate we live in is still to cool at night to start putting plants in the ground, but Andy and I are working on planning a makeover for our front gardens, which have just sort of developed haphazardly as we've gone along. The front of our house is really the only place that gets full sun, so we're planning on turning an existing crappy triangular garden between the front walk and the driveway into a much nicer, built-up flower and vegetable garden. We'll also build up the beds along the front of the house and brick them in with matching stone, instead of the weird stone that is there now. And, probably the best thing, we'll lay some landscaping fabric so I have to do less weeding! Yay! (Full disclosure: I rarely weed, so my gardens often look like shit.)

We're putting in a compost situation this year too. We're following the basic premises of this guy: more compost, less work. It's basically a self-sifting compost thing so you don't have to turn it. Hooray!

We went to Lowe's today to start looking at plants and bricks and junk. I'll also ask my sister to draw up a garden blueprint sort of thing, which is something she's really good at. She knows what kind of plants like to be near each other, and which corner will need the most watering, and stuff. So I'll tell her the thoughts we have on what we'll be growing, what has to stay (like my teeny lilac and some tulips), and the dimensions, and she'll add some suggestions and send me a sketch with zones mapped out!

Do you have a garden? How do you remember to water it often enough? How do you decide what to grow? What tips do you have for a novice who always counted on her sister to do her share of the watering when they were kids?